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ramblinroseEU72 t1_j5ogf8j wrote

And a power grid from the 1950s that is above ground.

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THE_GREAT_PICKLE t1_j5p8wm3 wrote

I lived in NH for 20ish years, lost power constantly. Lived in the metro Boston area for 10+ never lost power even once. We bought a house a few years ago back in NH, lost power within 2 days of moving here.

It’s an old grid and it’s all above ground. When it’s windy or snowy or super rainy, that screws with the power line. Whereas in Boston all of them are buried so it’s really rare.

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vexingsilence t1_j5pa3ko wrote

Instead, Boston gets manhole fires and electrified metal plates on the road and side walks. Killed a couple dogs if I remember right.

Depends on many factors. If your area is powered by one set of lines, you lose that, you're out. In a more dense area, there's more lines, less chance of a single break causing a significant outage. If you're well away from civilization, you're also likely to be low on the list for restoration.

Look at the delivery fees on your electric bill right now and tell me you seriously want them to rebuild the entire infrastructure underground. Most of the state wouldn't be able to afford what would happen to that delivery fee.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5pq7ys wrote

> Look at the delivery fees on your electric bill right now and tell me you seriously want them to rebuild the entire infrastructure underground.

Yes please. I'll take a slightly higher light bill and power that rarely ever goes out over a slightly lower one and I lose power a few times a year.

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vexingsilence t1_j5pr68w wrote

Wouldn't be slightly higher. Especially in areas where they encounter rock and need to either drill, blast, or both. A lot of people are struggling with utility costs as it is.

What they should do is build the line from Québec to lower electric costs, then maybe use some of the savings to do infrastructure work.

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5pvrxi wrote

And what Reddit doesn't realize is that if you bury lines, when you have to cross 93 in the whites, it takes significantly more cable, even cost of drilling aside. Much easier to put two tall poles up and run a "straight" line across a valley then go down and back up.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5qijfs wrote

I don't disagree with the latter half of that, the line from QBC would be great. But it doesn't have to be a massive increase- a small increase, say 1c/kwh, and then use the proceeds to begin burying everything- start from the outside (rural areas will be easier to do this in and can be done with smaller impact to people trying to get around) and work your way into the cities. 1c/kwh across the entire state will not have a massive effect on each individual's bills, I'm a rather heavy user at 2800KWH and my bill would increase $28, but across the entire state, that adds up quickly.

Not to mention there are federal incentives for burying power lines (because the rest of the country has more or less figured out that burying them vastly improves resiliency against weather) to help offset the cost.

Last I saw it cost around $11500/mi to bury lines- not cheap by any means, but it could be covered in <10 years by a 1c/kwh increase statewide. Additionally, most new construction already has buried lines, no reason not to make that the standard.

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5titgq wrote

> Last I saw it cost around $11500/mi to bury lines- not cheap by any means, but it could be covered in <10 years by a 1c/kwh increase statewide. Additionally, most new construction already has buried lines, no reason not to make that the standard.

Where did you see that? Because if it cost $2/foot to bury lines, the power companies would have buried all of them years ago.

The absolute cheapest per mile number I have found recently is $1.5 million to bury lines. Even in 2017, when Hydro Quebec floated the idea of burying 11 miles of lines (that didn't require any horizontal drilling, mind you), it was $4 million per mile

So if you have a way to put high voltage transmission lines in the ground for $2/foot, write Eversource and tell them because they'll be all over that.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5uz5yg wrote

This was in regards to poles and local service, the long distance HV Transmission isn't commonly buried AFAIK.

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5v0pnj wrote

Doesn't have to be long distance HV transmission. Even just like 34k or 46k that would serve a neighborhood is going to get costly to bury.

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vexingsilence t1_j5qljju wrote

Rural maybe, if it doesn't interfere with their ability to upgrade the lines as the population grows. Cities.. that may be a hard sell. Doubt a lot of people would want their yards ripped up just to get the electricity that they already get.

That's all assuming your analysis is correct, which I'm skeptical of.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5qricx wrote

> Doubt a lot of people would want their yards ripped up just to get the electricity that they already get.

I dunno, a simple "Hey we're going to tear it up, put it back as best we can, but at the end of it you'll have power that will never go down due to weather" I bet the vast majority would be on board.

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vexingsilence t1_j5qsc1u wrote

Doubt it since power outages in the cities are pretty rare. Then how would the street lights work? Have to replace the wood poles with ones with interior wiring? But then the cable/phone/internet and in some cases fire alarm are all hanging on the existing poles. To do it right would be a lot move involved.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5qtu89 wrote

> But then the cable/phone/internet and in some cases fire alarm are all hanging on the existing poles.

They solved this problem elsewhere... they buried those too, and is also a great way to defray the costs so it's not 100% on the electric company. Maybe ask ATT/comcast to dip into their portion of the $1,000,000,000,000 (yes, 1 TRILLION DOLLARS) that has been given to internet providers to increase broadband availability that never got used appropriately to cover some of the cost?

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vexingsilence t1_j5qufgy wrote

Yea, right. They'd just jack our rates even more. Probably end up in court since the utilities won't look kindly on Eversource trying to pass on some of the costs. And it's not the same phone/cable company throughout the state, to complicate things further.

Or.. you know, just leave the wires on the poles and call it done.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5rxvzt wrote

Until the next storm and then we re hang them. Those will last until the next storm. And so on

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vexingsilence t1_j5sev2v wrote

You make it sound like everything falls off the poles every storm. They'll fix it. If it's that much of a problem, get a generator.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5uzk6e wrote

> If it's that much of a problem, get a generator.

What a solution! Instead of everyone paying a few extra dollars on their light bill and improving things for everyone, people should go out and spend $10k+ on a standby generator! Or $1k and only power a few items.

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vexingsilence t1_j5v09de wrote

Precisely. Why do I want to pay anything extra for your comfort and convenience? You chose to live someplace where infrastructure is lacking, you weren't forced to live there. Find a solution with your own money, you're not welcome to mine.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5w174s wrote

Ok boomer. How does it feel knowing that you, and people like you, are actively making the world a worse place?

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vexingsilence t1_j5w1zdk wrote

Move to a city if you want more reliable electricity. Geniuses like you choose to live in areas that don't have the creature comforts you want, then you bitch about it and try to force the rest of us to pay it.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5yglkj wrote

I grew up in fucking Alaska, they even figured this shit out. It's assholes like you digging your feet in holding everyone back.

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vexingsilence t1_j5z1nm6 wrote

Move back to Alaska then. Or pay for it yourself. You're not even from around here but you want people to pay to increase the reliability of your electric service? That's some entitlement.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5z3576 wrote

> Or pay for it yourself.

That's exactly what I'm suggesting, I pay for my portion, you pay for yours, and by everyone pitching in and paying a small portion of it, we all get more reliable power.

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vexingsilence t1_j5z3spi wrote

No, because it will cost a lot more per service point in rural areas than it will in denser city areas. Yet when work like this gets done, the costs tend to be evenly distributed. Besides which, we don't need this in the cities. The power doesn't go out that often. Might be nice for aesthetic reasons but it's not worth the disruption.

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5tiew4 wrote

Except most people know that that would be a complete lie. The powerlines in front of your house are almost never the ones that cause an outage. Outages usually happen upstream when they affect thousands of people.

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5uzd5h wrote

In 5 years in this particular house we've lost power at least a couple days every winter, it has consistently been local lines down due to trees or weather.

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ElisabetSobeckPhD t1_j5s0gop wrote

they literally just raised rates like $.11/kwh

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AKBigDaddy t1_j5uz0oo wrote

And would your lifestyle be dramatically different if they raised them .12 instead of .11?

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ElisabetSobeckPhD t1_j5v175e wrote

Personally no, but just saying "raise rates $0.01/kwh and bury the lines" is likely a vast oversimplification. Retrofitting buried electric across the state is a monumental task, when you consider the geography combined with a bunch of people who don't want people interfering with their property. Also consider the huge amount of people that were struggling to afford living here, even before the rate hikes.

I read this article from 2009 that makes it seem fairly unpalatable.

>A rough price tag puts the cost at $17 billion or more. To put that in perspective, cleaning up from the ice storm cost the utilities about $80 million, enough to bury about 100 miles of line. It would take the cost of the damage from 90 similar ice storms to pay for burying half of the state's power lines.

>"It does become more economical to hope for the best and clean up the mess," said Seth Wheeler of New Hampshire Electric Co-op.

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01Zaphod t1_j5pfytj wrote

What pisses me off is not losing power during the storm, but losing it two or 3 days after the storm when there are clear skies and no wind. Happens a lot where I live, and it makes no sense.

Put the damn lines underground!

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5pvjri wrote

Squirrels. I've lost it a few times due to them. They'll get up on the lines and jump to the transformers and, well...

Also, in the terrain we have putting them underground is expensive as all hell and can only be done 6 months out of the year.

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UnfairAd7220 t1_j5q9awa wrote

You think a billion dollars is pocket change?

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Acanthaceae_Square t1_j5qnuls wrote

Cumulatively compared to the cost of continuing to repair outages and downed lines from storms, plus associated costs of not having power, year after year? Yes

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01Zaphod t1_j5yj5s2 wrote

I’m not going to argue with you there. I’m with you on that.

However, if the infrastructure had been put underground to start with, recurring maintenance costs due to inclement weather, natural disasters and animal/human accidents would be dramatically less than it is now. A bonus to that situation would be better protection against EMP discharge or terrorist attack.

If you think about it, all of our other services are underground - waste (for obvious reasons), water, propane, natural gas, etc. Why not our power grid?

From a historical perspective, I believe the decision was made to utilize the existing telegraph structures to transfer electricity because it was cheaper and faster to install. I’m not a historian, so don’t quote me on that - it’s just conjecture.

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[deleted] t1_j5rci2y wrote

Because Boston has buried utilities. I lived in Toronto for 20 years and didn’t lose power until somebody hit a transformer and then put for a week. Same pile bro

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JayBisky OP t1_j5oglke wrote

I was looking this type of comment

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Able_Cunngham603 t1_j5r2k95 wrote

This type of answer over-simplifies the problem. Burying thousands of miles of power lines would not be a cheap endeavor in the best of circumstances (and NH taxpayers are notoriously cheap).

And trying to do this in NH would be even more complicated (/expensive) than in other areas. We do live in the Granite State after all.

Carving out that much Granite would upset the Lizardfolk—and that’s not a problem any of us want.

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MusicalMerlin1973 t1_j5ow5jq wrote

Granite state. There’s a lot of boulders lining those roads. And stone walls that come right up to the road. Those are historic you can’t touch so….

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ramblinroseEU72 t1_j5owhwa wrote

Absolutely, and the fact that much of the ground is bedrock or extremely rocky so it's hard to dig and lay cables in.

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MusicalMerlin1973 t1_j5p3xif wrote

I’d also say this: I’m dating myself here. I remember when we got cable in the 80s. I’m pretty sure some of the town has that underground but a lot don’t. Same with fiber optic that tds put in a decade ago.

I’m not a fan of losing power. When er have a major event my road is often 5 days without. We got it back briefly yesterday for 40 minutes. When our first kid was born my parents gave us a generator for Christmas so we could keep the house warm when we lose power. It is what it is.

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warren_stupidity t1_j5poyob wrote

Oddly enough most new construction uses underground conduit for utility wires. I guess the bedrock is only a problem on the roads.

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5pv2sf wrote

Yeah, because most construction isn't taking place on bedrock.

Running them underground from the pole to a building makes sense. Running them underground everywhere in the terrain we have in this state doesn't.

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warren_stupidity t1_j5qy7sj wrote

Well ok I'm sure there may be geographical features in some areas that prohibit underground conduit, but for example, my road is pretty much exactly the same region as my house, and all the new-ish (like within the last 30-40 years) houses here have underground connected to the poles on the street. We have a lot of long driveways too. Most of the rest of my town is pretty much the same, except the newer developments and clusters all have underground systems for the whole area. So, in summary, sure they could bury a lot, perhaps almost all of the local distribution systems, they just won't because it doesn't make short term financial sense.

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5rk0ic wrote

As someone else mentioned, if you wanna see your electricity bill skyrocket because of distribution fees, by all means... There's a reason that rural areas (and not just in NH, all over the world) don't bury conduit. It's expensive as hell.

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warren_stupidity t1_j5td7sm wrote

Ok, but you started out claiming that it couldn’t be done because of ‘bedrock’, and now your argument is it’s too expensive. I doubt the expense argument too. As noted, new developments are almost all putting utilities underground. It apparently isn’t all that expensive. But yes there is obviously a cost. The offset is drastically reduced maintenance costs. The problem is that it takes a long time for the maintenance offset to balance out the installation expense.

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Tullyswimmer t1_j5thoe5 wrote

> I doubt the expense argument too

Seattle buried some power lines in 2007. It cost about $2500 per foot - and the way that article is written, it doesn't necessarily cover the whole cost.

A much cheaper proposition by Hydro Quebec was floated in 2017. And by "much cheaper" I mean it was $4.2 million per mile instead of the $13 million per mile it cost in Seattle.

Generally speaking, burying powerlines costs about 10x as much as running them overhead, and the numbers in that article come out to be just under $4 million per mile.

Even the most recent prices I can find, for PG&E, put a number between $1.5M and $3M per mile with the costs being paid by the people who are served by the electric utility, and the costs being dependent on how much the process is.

The reason that housing developments are putting utilities underground is that burying power cables rated for 200 amps when you already have trenches for water and sewer doesn't add a huge expense over running the cables overhead, since most of the cost, at that point, is the cable. Because for residential installs, the cost per foot is only about $8, unless there's local regulations and rules that make it significantly more expensive, because there's limited capacity in underground conduits and cable vaults.

And again, all of these costs are basic costs. They don't account for the type of terrain we have in NH. The closest we could get would be the cost from Hydro Quebec but even there the soil is much flatter and they weren't going to have to do any horizontal drilling to make it work - That was all using existing infrastructure for buried cable. Horizontal drilling is much harder when you have as much rock in your soil as we do.

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